Sometimes I Amaze Myself With My Prophetic Political Posts ....
Here's the post I published on May 20, 2013 where I outlined the problem Stephen Harper created for himself with inappropriate Senate appointments:
"When Stephen Harper decided to add Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy to Canada's unelected, undemocratic Senate, he started in motion a series of events that has ultimately become an ugly, nasty political scandal. For starters, neither Duffy nor Wallin qualified for senate appointment as representatives of their respective native provinces. While Ms. Wallin is originally from Saskatchewan, she has lived away for most of her adult life and Saskatchewan was no longer her principle residence."
-'One Thing Leads To Another' - How Stephen Harper Single Handedly Created The Current Senate Scandal. May 20, 2013
(Now .. here's what the RCMP report on the PMO Senate scandal is telling us):
"OTTAWA — Fearing two of its top fundraisers would lose their seats in
the Senate, senior officials from the Prime Minister’s Office appear to
have attempted to strong-arm Senate officials to declare Mike Duffy and
Pamela Wallin as meeting their constitutional residency requirements,
according to recently released RCMP court documents.
Questions about the duo’s residency have dogged them since they entered the Senate in 2009.
The court documents filed this week as part of an investigation into a $90,000 payment to Duffy from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright suggest that Harper’s office tried to get a Senate committee to clear the two of residency questions, and that the province of Ontario was investigating Wallin over her Ontario health card, even though she was supposed to be a resident of Saskatchewan.
It also appears that any opportunity for the Senate to redefine the constitutional residency requirement — that a senator be a resident in the province they represent — was put on the backburner while the Senate walked through audits of Duffy and Wallin’s spending.
Questions about the duo’s residency have dogged them since they entered the Senate in 2009.
The court documents filed this week as part of an investigation into a $90,000 payment to Duffy from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright suggest that Harper’s office tried to get a Senate committee to clear the two of residency questions, and that the province of Ontario was investigating Wallin over her Ontario health card, even though she was supposed to be a resident of Saskatchewan.
It also appears that any opportunity for the Senate to redefine the constitutional residency requirement — that a senator be a resident in the province they represent — was put on the backburner while the Senate walked through audits of Duffy and Wallin’s spending.
